Caught: Suspect who escaped during bathroom break nabbed in Bronx

They finally flushed out this fugitive!

A murder suspect who escaped from a Brooklyn police precinct yesterday by asking a cop for a bathroom break was captured today by cops hiding out in a friend’s Bronx apartment, the NYPD said.

Brandon Santana, 24, was apprehended at 3:15 p.m. at 3930 Third Avenue by NYPD officers and the Regional Fugitive Task Force, about 37 hours after he ran, un-handcuffed, from the 78th Precinct in Park Slope after knocking down a cop escorting him to the toilet.

Police said that the girlfriend of Santana’s friend opened the door when they arrived, and she told them that a pal of her boyfriend was staying there.

NYPD

Brandon Santana, escaped during bathroom break.

Cops found Santana standing in the bedroom, and took him into custody without incident, according to the NYPD.

Santana is suspected of repeatedly bashing 22-year-old dad-to-be Alexander Santiago with a lead pipe during a gang assault on the man and three of his friends at 12th Street and Fifth Avenue in Park Slope on Aug. 1, 2010.

After Santana’s latest arrest today, Santiago’s girlfriend Stephanie Mercado, told The Post, “'I hope the cops keep him tight, and don't let him get away.”

“No bathroom breaks this time,” Mercado said. “And now that they have him we want them to get the rest of the cowards. I want justice."

Santana’s apprehension was the second time in the past week he was caught by cops.

He had been hiding out with a relative in Iowa, but returned to the city this week – and was promptly caught by cops who wanted to arrest him for Santiago’s murder.

Detectives questioned Santana at the station house Wednesday night, and then left at the end of their shift at 1 a.m. yesterday, expecting to put him in a witness lineup later.

An hour later, after he had been placed in a first-floor holding cell, Santana asked the officer minding him if he could use the bathroom.

When the cop opened the cell door, Santana — who was not handcuffed — shoved the officer, knocking him to the ground, and ran straight out of the station house, law-enforcement sources said.

One cop behind the front desk jumped over it to chase him, but hurt himself in the process, sources said.

A lieutenant also went after Santana but couldn’t catch up, sources said.

“It’s like they gave us justice, then took it away,” said Anaisa Santiago, Alexander’s 15-year-old sister yesterday.

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Lennar design accommodates multigenerational families

In some cases, it may be Grandma moving in with the family. Other times, it may be a recent college graduate returning to the nest.

For all sorts of reasons — financial, medical, personal — a rising number of Americans are moving into extended family households.

Spotting a niche in the growing trend, Lennar Corp. has launched a new concept tailor-made for multigenerational family living.

It’s basically a house within a house: a smaller living unit next to the main home designed to provide independence but also access to the rest of the family household.

“People are really loving the whole concept,” said Carlos Gonzalez, president of the southeast Florida division of Lennar, a Miami-based home-building giant. “We adapted to the market from a design standpoint.”

In Miami-Dade County, Lennar is selling various versions of multigenerational homes in three new developments in Doral, Kendall and Homestead.

Louis Moreno of Kendall and his wife, Danilza Velez, signed a contract for a large NextGen home in The Vineyards development in Homestead last October — even before the models had been built.

“We loved it,” said Moreno, a 45-year-old engineer.

Moreno said his mother-in-law will be able to use the new suite when she visits, as will his family members who frequently come to town from Puerto Rico. “This will provide them with more comfortable space and more privacy,” he said. He also plans to use it as a game room and entertainment area.

The two-story Zinfandel home Moreno picked has three bedrooms and 2 1/2 bathrooms in the main home with a family room and two-car garage. In addition, it has an ample 789-square-foot suite with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchenette. The suite has its own garage, a separate front entrance and an internal door connecting to the main home.

The Zinfandel, which has 2,249 square feet of air-conditioned space in the main house, starts at $283,990 in the Homestead community at 128 SE 28th Ter., but a similar home in Kendall would run about $100,000 more, primarily because of higher land costs, Fernandez said. (In Doral, there is a NextGen home priced at $677,990.)

Some multigenerational models have suites as small as 489 square feet, but all have a separate entrance, a bedroom, a bathroom and some sort of kitchen space.

The idea takes various shapes. One option at the Kendall Square development at 16950 SW 90th St. is a Granny unit above a detached garage.

“Independence is the key word,” said Frank Fernandez, director of sales and marketing for the southeast Florida division.

Depending on local zoning rules, some homes can have full kitchens, others are restricted to kitchenettes with a microwave but no stove. Similarly, some municipalities permit the space to be used as a rental, others prohibit it.

The choice is proving popular. Fernandez said in The Vineyards development in Homestead, 10 of the 14 homes sold to date are NextGen. At Kendall Square, 35 of 107 sales are multigenerational, and at the Isles at Grand Bay development at 11301 NW 74th Street in Doral, five of 48 houses are.

Adapting homes for special needs, such as wheelchairs and safety railings, is done at cost, Fernandez said: “That is company policy.”

As one of the nation’s largest home builders, Lennar has been rebounding strongly from the housing crash. Last week, the builder, whose shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange, posted better than expected earnings for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended Nov. 30, 2012.

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Florida Legislature now rethinking mental health spending

In light of the tragic shootings in Connecticut and Colorado, Florida legislators are taking a hard look at the state’s mental health system, which ranks 49th among states and the District of Columbia when it comes to funding.

“That’s $39 per person per year,” said Bob Sharpe, president and CEO of the Florida Council for Community Mental Health, one of 10 panelists addressing the House Healthy Families Subcommittee Thursday as an “ongoing conversation” to address the system’s woes. That figure, experts said, was lower than per capita funding for mental health in the 1950s.

The violence at Sandy Hook Elementary School is just one reason for action, said the subcommittee’s chair, state Rep. Gayle Harrell, R.-Stuart. “Any time you have a tragedy it certainly focuses public attention on an issue,” Harrell said. “We want to make sure that we don’t just do this however when there’s a tragedy.”

Legislators need to look at the continuum of care “from prevention to identification to intervention to treatment,” Harrell said, if any improvements can occur in a system where issues range from school safety to finding places for mentally impaired nursing home patients.

The lack of funding for prevention in the community, particularly in schools, has been a key issue both at Thursday’s subcommittee meeting and at a Senate meeting Wednesday chaired by Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood.

That’s because the bulk of the state’s $723 million mental health budget is used for treatment, said Rob Siedlecki, assistant secretary for Mental Health and Substance Abuse.

Harrell’s committee asked each panelist to come up with policy rather than funding solutions for mental health issues in the state.

“If we can set up a system in place and look at our system and really change it so that it is much more responsive to prevention, to the needs of the community then you can avoid some of those tragedies perhaps,” Harrell said. “When a tragedy fades and the memory of it fades, you don’t want to let this issue fade. “

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Samsung puts lid on capex for first time since financial crisis

SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics Co turned cautious on spending for the first time since the global financial crisis, keeping its annual investment plan unchanged at 2012 levels, as demand for computer chips wanes and the smartphone market slows.

Samsung, one of the industry’s most aggressive spenders, has ramped up capital expenditure every year since 2004 except 2009 to meet soaring demand for its array of consumer electronics and mobile devices. It sold a record 700,000 smartphones a day in the last quarter.

But with the personal computer market shrinking for the first time in 11 years, the global smartphone market growing more slowly, and Apple Inc moving to buy fewer of Samsung‘s microprocessors used in the iPhone and iPad, the South Korean IT giant is now forced to keep a lid on spending.

“Overall its earnings momentum remains intact, and smartphone shipments will continue to grow even in the traditionally weak first quarter, as Samsung’s got a broader product line-up and Apple appears to be struggling in pushing iPhone volumes aggressively,” said Lee Se-chul, a Seoul-based analyst at Meritz Securities.

Samsung, which reported a record quarterly and annual profit on Friday, said it would keep 2013 capital expenditure unchanged from 2012.

“The key word for us in investment in 2013 is flexibility. We’ll decide as the market demand dictates,” Robert Yi, head of Samsung’s investor relations, told analysts.

Data from the company shows Samsung started to slow down planned investment in the last quarter.

Samsung said it spent 4.4 trillion won in October-December, pushing its 2012 investment to a record 23 trillion won ($ 21.5 billion). But the company said in October that it was on course to spend 25 trillion won in 2012.

Analysts had expected a 4-20 percent cut in Samsung’s 2013 capital spending.

By contrast, Taiwanese rival TSMC is planning to raise its capital expenditure to $ 9 billion this year, aimed in part at winning Apple orders away from Samsung.

Shares in Samsung fell 2.1 percent as of 0250 GMT, lagging a 1.1 percent decline in the wider market.

RECORD EARNINGS

Samsung had poured money into factories to boost production of chips and panels used in Apple products and its Galaxy range devices, pushing its operating profit to 8.84 trillion won in the last quarter. The 89 percent increase from a year earlier was in line with its earlier estimate.

Profit at its mobile devices division, which makes phones, tablets and cameras, more than doubled to 5.44 trillion won in the quarter from a year earlier, lifted by a broader offering of smartphones – from the very cheap to the very expensive.

The division accounted for 62 percent of Samsung’s overall fourth-quarter profit, up from 55 percent a year earlier.

Samsung is also seeing strong sales of its Note phablet, which analysts expect to help Samsung get through any seasonal weakness better than rivals.

Samsung, which doesn’t provide a breakdown of smartphone sales, is estimated to have sold around 63 million smartphones in the last quarter, including 15 million Galaxy S IIIs and 7 million Note IIs.

The company also said 2012 operating profit rose 86 percent to an all-time high of 29 trillion won.

SAMSUNG VS APPLE

Samsung sold 213 million smartphones last year and enlarged its share of the global market to 30.4 percent from around 20 percent in 2011, a report by market research firm Strategy Analytics showed on Friday. The sharp increase reflects Samsung’s aggressive marketing of its wide product range.

Apple’s share of the market shrank slightly to 19.4 percent from 19.0 percent in 2011, according to the report.

Globally, sales of smartphones surged 42.7 percent last year to 700 million, Strategy Analytics said.

Samsung said on Friday it expects the global smartphone segment to shrink in January-March from the seasonally strong fourth quarter, and that growth of the overall handset market will slow to the mid single-digits this year.

The forecast is in line with industry estimates, with signs of a slowdown having already emerged.

Apple shipped 47.8 million iPhones in the three months ended December, a record that nonetheless disappointed many analysts accustomed to years of outperformance. The Cupertino, California-based company also missed Wall Street’s revenue forecast for a third straight quarter as iPhone sales lagged expectations.

Apple shares have dropped by more than a third since mid-September as investors fret that its days of hyper growth are over and its devices are no longer as ‘must-have’ as they were.

By contrast, shares in Samsung have risen 12 percent in the same period as the company once seen as quick to copy the ideas of others now sets the pace in innovation.

At the world’s biggest electronics show in Las Vegas this month, Samsung unveiled a prototype phone with a flexible display that can be folded almost like paper, and a microchip with eight processing cores, creating a buzz that these may be used in the next Galaxy range.

“It’s very probable to us that the Exynos 5 Octa (processor) will find its way into the Galaxy S4,” UBS analyst Nicolas Gaudois wrote in a recent note.

“It also looked as if the curved display is close enough to finished product. We came away even more convinced that displays will provide significant differentiation to Samsung devices, and application processors will materially grow over time,” Gaudois said. ($ 1 = 1066.2000 Korean won)

(Reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Ryan Woo)

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Katy Perry Turns '70s Game Show Host

A mustachioed Katy Perry helps celebrate Ellen DeGeneres' 55th birthday during tomorrow's episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

RELATED: Candid Star Sightings

The comedienne's birthday is Saturday, but instead of receiving gifts she decided to dish them out, allowing Perry to live her dream of being a game show host.

In the clip, Perry enters in '70s TV garb complete with a plaid three-quarter-length suit jacket, bow tie and mustache.

RELATED: Ellen DeGeneres Slams One Million Moms

"I asked for the Anne Hathaway, obviously," Perry joked, referencing her cropped hairdo.

Click the video to see the pop star introduce "everyone's favorite party game" Grab Ellen's Bust. You can watch the entire birthday episode on Friday. Check your local listings.

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Fly in the ointment

President Obama is riding high in the afterglow of his second Inauguration — but the signs of trouble ahead are already becoming clear.

First off, it now looks like the US economy peaked in the third quarter last year — growing at 3.1 percent, a huge leap from 1.3 percent in the second quarter and 2 percent in the first.

That was perfect timing for his re-election, bringing unemployment below 8 percent for the first time since Obama took office and robbing Mitt Romney of one of his top talking points.

But top economists believe things slowed in the fourth quarter and again this year. Many are openly predicting that fourth-quarter growth will come in at between 1 and 1.5 percent, and growth is unlikely to top that rate in the near future.

Reuters

Not as planned: Obama, yesterday, dealing with a fly as he speaks in the White House State Dining Room.

We’re already seeing the signs of an economy far from recovery. Retail sales in December, the most important shopping month of the year, were a flop. Holiday-related sales rose just 0.7 percent from Oct. 28 to Dec. 24, compared with a 2 percent rise the year before.

And according to a Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan report, consumer confidence is at its lowest point since December 2011.

The president may continue to claim that the economy’s woes just aren’t his fault, but in his fifth year in office, those excuses are wearing exceedingly thin. It won’t help that his Inaugural Address included barely a mention of jobs or economic growth: He’s made his real priorities clear.

Meanwhile, he’s dealt himself another problem that will frustrate all his efforts to deal with the economy.

A year ago, Democratic pollsters Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell warned in an oped column that Obama could only win re-election by running “the most negative campaign in history,” and that the political damage from such a campaign would leave him unable to govern in a second term.

It was one of the boldest predictions of the election season — and it was right.

No sooner had Romney secured the GOP nomination than Team Obama hit him with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of negative ads, casting him as, in Haley Barbour’s words, a “wealthy plutocrat married to a known equestrian.”

The Obama blitzkrieg defined Mitt Romney before he could define himself. And despite an inspired first debate performance, he never recovered.

Nor did the president let up after Election Day. In his inaugural address, his usual lofty rhetoric thinly veiled the same partisan attack lines he used in his campaign, complete with references to “the shrinking few who do very well” and those who believe in “happiness for the few.”

Even after the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was willing and able to strike a conciliatory tone with his political opposition. Not Obama.

The start of Obama’s second term looks a lot more like the beginning of FDR’s second term in 1937, when he launched his Supreme Court-packing plan — and wound up losing 81 seats to the Republicans in the 1938 midterms.

Like Roosevelt, Obama is overplaying his hand. His favorability rating has dropped sharply, from 55 percent immediately after his re-election to 48 percent today. He is now the only president in history to be elected to a second term with fewer popular votes than he won for his first term.

But none of this is good for the country.

After all, he won re-election despite a vastly unpopular domestic-policy record, with no plan for a second term and an electorate that believes the country is on the wrong track.

If the president continues to treat Republicans — who control the House and a strong minority in the Senate — with such contempt, it will be almost impossible to legislate much of anything.

Yet the country needs Washington to actually resolve at least a few issues — to find some grounds for principled compromise. The current standoff produces massive uncertainty. What will future tax rates be? Which government programs will be cut or expanded? What parts of the government might wind up shut down for extended periods while the two sides fight?

And uncertainty leaves businesses and others afraid to invest — afraid to take risks when the rules are too likely to change, and maybe change again within the year. Not enough people will risk putting money into long-term ventures when the future is so cloudy.

All of which will make it nearly impossible to get the economy truly moving again, creating massive numbers of jobs to bring unemployment down below 5 percent, where it should be.

As Americans, we are dismayed at the pain the president is imposing on the country, but as Republicans with solutions, our future as a party is bright.

Ed Cox is the chairman and David Laska the communications director of the New York State Republican Party.

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Miami Dolphins slam Norman Braman, Marlins Park deal

The Miami Dolphins ramped up their public campaign for a tax-funded stadium renovation this week, buying full-page ads against their top critic and trying to distance the plan from the unpopular Marlins deal.

The team bought an ad in Tuesday’s Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald knocking auto magnate Norman Braman’s criticism of the Sun Life Stadium deal, which would have Florida and Miami-Dade split the costs with owner Stephen Ross for a $400 million renovation. The Dolphins would pay at least $201 million, with taxpayers using state funds and a higher Miami-Dade hotel tax to pay $199 million.

In a fact sheet sent to media Tuesday morning, the Dolphins listed ways their deal differs from the 2009 Marlins deal. First: Ross, a billionaire real estate developer, would use private dollars to fund at least 51 percent of the Sun Life effort, compared to less than 25 percent from Marlins owner Jeff Loria. Second, Sun Life helps the economy more than the Marlins park does.

“Just because the Marlins did a bad deal doesn’t mean we should oppose a good deal where at least a majority of the cost is paid from private sources and more than 4,000 local jobs are created during construction alone,” the fact sheet states. And while the Dolphins’ Miami Gardens stadium has hosted two Super Bowls since 2007 and is in the running for the 2016 game, “Marlins Stadium does not generate the ability to attract world-class sports events -- other than a World Series from time to time depending on the success of the team.”

NFL teams play eight home games a year if they don’t make the playoffs, while baseball teams have 81.

Miami and Miami-Dade built the Marlins a $640 million stadium at the site of the Dolphins’ old home at the Orange Bowl in Little Havana. The Marlins contributed about $120 million and agreed to pay between $2.5 million and $4.9 million a year for 35 years to pay back $35 million of debt the county borrowed for the stadium. As a publicly owned stadium, the Marlins ballpark pays no property taxes. Most of the public money came from Miami-Dade hotel taxes, along with $50 million of debt tied to the county’s general fund.

Sun Life is privately owned and pays $3 million a year in property taxes to Miami-Dade. It currently receives $2 million a year from Florida’ s stadium program, a subsidy tied to converting the football venue to baseball in the 1990s when the Marlins played there. The Dolphins also paid for a second full-page ad with quotes from leading hoteliers in Miami-Dade endorsing the stadium plan. Among them: Donald Trump, whose company recently purchased the Doral golf resort. “Steve Ross’ commitment to modernize Sun Life Stadium -- while covering most of the construction costs -- is the right thing for Miami-Dade,’’ the ad quotes Trump as saying.

Also on Tuesday, Ross and team CEO Mike Dee sent a letter to Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and county commissioners requesting negotiations over the stadium deal. The letter said the deal Ross unveiled last week is a “baseline for debate” and asked for talks. The letter also urged the commission to adopt a resolution proposed by Commissioner Barbara Jordan endorsing the state bill that would allow taxes for Sun Life. The resolution is on the agenda for Wednesday’s commission meeting.

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Miami conclave to help map the next 50 years for Southeast Florida

On a Google map, the long stretch of Florida coastline from deep South Miami-Dade County to Sebastian Inlet appears a seamless mass of urban development jammed between a thin border of sand on one side and wetlands and farmland on the other.

But zoom in and it’s soon sliced up by lines both real and imaginary: roadways, highways, railways, waterways and the boundaries of numerous, and often overlapping, governmental jurisdictions.

Now this vast area, at once connected and disconnected, is the subject of one of the most ambitious planning efforts ever undertaken in Florida. Called Seven50, it aims to chart a coordinated, integrated future for the development of Southeast Florida’s seven counties for a couple of generations, through the year 2060.

On Thursday, the big moveable feast of thinkers, planners, economists, government officials and business leaders that is Seven50 will convene in downtown Miami for the effort’s second public summit since its launch in Delray Beach last June.

It may sound like “wonky stuff,’’ said Seven50 lead consultant Victor Dover, a Coral Gables-based planner. But he said Seven50’s scores of participants are convinced that agreeing to coordinated plans across jurisdictional lines is critical if the region is to prosper and meet a long list of common challenges. They range from transportation logjams to the prospect of rising seas and U.S. and international competitors trying to grab our share of international investment, tourism, cargo and trade.

And that competition is serious and well-organized, Dover said. In Texas, for instance, 13 counties and 100 cities between Houston and Galveston have banded together in a similar planning alliance, and so have cities and states along the Great Lakes.

The advantage Southeast Florida has, Seven50 planners say, is that old real-estate cliche: Location, location, location.

But it risks throwing its advantage away unless it better links up its airports and seaports, installs more and better-connected mass transit, and develops strategies to improve education and retain and attract the kind of skilled, educated young people considered key to economic prosperity in today’s economy.

“Planning at this scale is profoundly American, from Jefferson to the creation of Washington, D.C., and if we don’t do it, we’re going to get blown away by the competition,’’ said Andres Duany, a renown Miami-based planner who will give the keynote address at the downtown gathering. “They’re gunning for us.’’

The free, full day of sessions at Miami Dade College’s Wolfson campus is designed to gather public input and share a still-in-development snapshot of the region as planners build what they describe as a massive data warehouse covering everything from demographics to housing, economics and transportation networks. Key discussion areas will be transportation, education and the daunting implications of climate change.

Because Southeast Florida will be among the first regions to experience rising sea levels, across-the-board planning on how to adapt will be essential. That could include difficult options like steering investment for new public infrastructure away from vulnerable areas, or protecting the region’s underground water supply from saltwater intrusion by raising freshwater levels in drainage canals, which could produce more seasonal flooding in some areas.

Some 200 public agencies, advocates, business groups and academic institutions, including the region’s principal universities, have signed up for the effort. Any resulting plans are purely voluntary, and no town or agency is obligated to adopt any ideas it doesn’t like, planners stress.

Still, the process hit a roadblock in the northernmost county, Indian River. The county commission and the Vero Beach city council voted to drop out after Tea Party-linked activists raised a public ruckus over their participation. The activists contend Seven50 is part of Agenda 21, a 20-year-old, nonbinding United Nations resolution that called for environmentally sustainable urban development, which they describe as a conspiracy to evict people from their homes and force them into dense urban housing.

Seven50 planners had to post a response on their website explaining they intend no such thing. Since then, the Stuart city council voted to join Seven50. Other Indian River agencies remain as participants.

The two-year planning effort, led by a consortium established by the South Florida Regional Planning Council and the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, is funded by a $4.25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The federal agency is encouraging local governments to engage in long-range planning under the sustainability label, which covers a range of strategies to foster development of pedestrian-friendly urban zones that put jobs close to homes and save energy by providing alternatives to auto transportation.

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Apple’s iPhone disappointment fans doubt on growth

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc missed Wall Street’s revenue forecast for the third straight quarter after iPhone sales came in below expectations, fanning fears that its dominance of the mobile industry was slipping.

Shares of the world’s largest tech company fell 10 percent to $ 463 in after-hours trade, wiping out some $ 50 billion of its market value – nearly equivalent to that of Hewlett-Packard and Dell, combined.

On Wednesday, Apple said it shipped a record 47.8 million iPhones in the December quarter, up 29 percent from the year-ago period. But that lagged the 50 million that analysts on average had projected.

Expectations heading into the results had been subdued by news of possible production cutbacks by some component suppliers in Asia, triggering fears that demand for the iPhone, which accounts for half of Apple‘s revenue, and the iPad could be slowing.

But many investors clung to hopes for a repeat of years of historical outperformance, analysts said.

“It’s going to call into question Apple‘s dominance in the space. It’s still one of the strong players, the others being Samsung and Google. It’s still a two-horse race, but Android continues to grow rapidly,” said Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu.

“If you step back a bit, it’s clear they shipped a lot of phones. But the problem is the high expectations that investors have. Apple‘s conservative guidance highlights the concerns over production cuts coming out of Asia recently.”

Apple projected revenue of $ 41 billion to $ 43 billion in the current, second fiscal quarter, lagging the average Wall Street forecast of more than $ 45 billion.

Fiscal first quarter revenue rose 18 percent to $ 54.5 billion, below the average analyst estimate of $ 54.73 billion, though earnings per share of $ 13.81 beat the Street forecast of $ 13.47, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Apple also undershot revenue targets in the previous two quarters, and these results will prompt more questions on what Apple has in its product pipeline, and what it can do to attract new sales and maintain its growth trajectory, analysts said.

Net income of $ 13.07 billion was virtually flat with $ 13.06 billion a year earlier on higher manufacturing costs. The year-ago quarter also had an extra week compared to this year.

Gross margins consequently slid to 38.6 percent, from 44.7 percent previously.

“You can’t just keep rolling out iPhones and iPads and think that everybody needs a new one,” said Jeffrey Gundlach, who runs DoubleLine Capital LP, the $ 53 billion bond firm. “The mini? What is that all about? It is a slightly smaller iPad — so what? So that is our new definition of innovation?”

“There are plenty of competitors like Samsung and other legitimate competitors like them,” added Gundlach, one of the highest-profile Apple bears. He maintains a $ 425 price target.

Shares of several of Apple‘s suppliers crumbled. Chip suppliers Skyworks and Cirrus Logic both fell more than 6 percent. Qualcomm Inc slipped 1.8 percent.

CHINA IS NEXT BIG GROWTH DRIVER

Apple shares are down nearly 30 percent from a record high in September, in part on worries that its days of hyper growth are over and its mobile devices are no longer as popular.

Intense competition from Samsung‘s cheaper phones – powered by Google’s Android software – and signs that the premium smartphone market may be close to saturation in developed markets have also caused a lot of investor anxiety.

Meanwhile, sales of the iPad came in at 22.9 million in the fiscal first quarter, roughly in line with forecasts.

On the brighter side, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer told Reuters that iPhone sales more than doubled in greater China – a region that Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has vowed to focus on as its next big growth driver.

The company will begin detailing results from that country going forward. Revenue from the region totaled $ 7.3 billion, up 60 percent from the year-ago December quarter.

“These results were OK, but they definitely raised a few questions,” said Shannon Cross, analyst with Cross Research. “Gross margin trajectory looks fine so that’s a positive and cash continues to grow. But I think investors are going to want to know what Apple plans to do with growing cash balance.”

“And other questions are going to be around innovation and where the next products are coming from and what does Tim Cook see in the next 12 to 18 months.”

ADDRESSING PRODUCTION RUMORS

In an unusual move for Apple, which typically does not respond to speculation, Cook addressed the production cutback rumors at length on the conference call and questioned the accuracy of rumors about its plans.

Media reports earlier this month said the company is slashing orders for iPhone 5 and iPad screens and other components from its Asian suppliers.

“Even if a particular data point were factual, it would be impossible to accurately interpret the data point as to what it meant for our overall business, because the supply chain is very complex,” he said, adding that Apple has multiple sources for components.

“Yields might vary. Supplier performance can vary. The beginning inventory positions can vary. There’s just an inordinately long list of things that would make any single data point not a great proxy for what’s going on,” he said.

Apple‘s initial iPhone and iPad mini sales were hurt by supply constraints, but Cook expects supply to balance demand for the iPad mini this quarter. He also acknowledged that iPad was cannibalizing its high-margin Macintosh computers, but said it was a huge opportunity for the company.

“On iPad in particular, we have the mother of all opportunities here, because the Windows market is much, much larger than the Mac market is,” he said. And I think it is clear that it’s already cannibalizing some.”

In another departure from tradition, Apple intends to tweak the way it both reports results and publishes forecasts.

Apart from breaking out results from China, the company also will no longer provide a single revenue or gross margin outlook. From Wednesday, it began providing the range it expects to hit, rather than the often-ludicrously conservative estimates that Apple was once notorious for.

The new policy took many by surprise.

“Before people could always ignore the guidance,” said Dan Niles, Chief Investment Officer of AlphaOne Capital Partners, LLC. “Apple is telling investors that they need to pay attention to the guidance and you can’t ignore it, which is basically what we all did in the past.”

(Additional reporting by Alistair Barr and Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco and Jennifer Ablan in New York; Editing by Bernard Orr and Edwin Chan)

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Shakira's Boyfriend Gerard Pique Posts First Baby Pic

Shakira and Gerard Pique welcomed their first child, Milan Pique Mebarak, yesterday and he's already jumping into the world with both feet.

RELATED: Extravagant Celebrity Baby Names

"Milan's feet," Pique wrote, captioning a WhoSay photo on Wednesday. In the picture below, the baby is sporting a pair of clean white Nikes with his name on them.

Mother and child were said to be in "excellent health" after the birth yesterday in Barcelona, Spain.

Before going into labor, Shakira tweeted fans, asking that they "accompany [her] in [their] prayers on this very important day of [her] life."

Gerard Pique on WhoSay

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